I was introduced to jazz, and that's become a basic concern and passion of mine ever since.

The habeas corpus business, that's to show that he [Bill Clinton] is not tough on crime.

That [race] is still part of what [Barack Obama] is riding on. Except that, too, is diminishing.

The NSA has the capacity to keep track of everything we do on the phone and on the internet.[Barack] Obama has done nothing about that.

Counting the ones I've co-edited, I guess about 28 or 29 [books I've written].

I met [my wife Margot] on Fire Island when I had a house there many years ago.

There wasn't much said, but I was thinking, perhaps unkindly - not unkindly,but on - inaccurately of Theodore Dreiser's "Carrie," when the main character in "Carrie" has been brought down by Carrie and his - he - dress is disheveled and all that sort of thing. And that's the last I ever saw of [Will Shawn].